On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Jesse wrote: >> > From the way it is discussed on the site, it seems like the fedora project >> > will be one constant beta test for Redhat to decide what to put into there >> > enterprise edition. >> >> Where was it that you got this impression? There will be both stable >> and test releases of Fedora Core, just like there used to be both >> stable and beta releases of Red Hat Linux. If there's any point of >> the site that misled you, please file a bug report in bugzilla so that >> others don't fall prey of the same wrong impression. > >Seems like this is the line that may cause that impression: > >"It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make >its way into Red Hat products. Which is no different from Red Hat Linux. Red Hat Linux was itself a proving ground for new technology which later got included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fedora is no different in this regard. Some examples of this include major new releases of core portions of the OS such as the kernel, glibc, XFree86, GNOME, KDE, and individual features such as NPTL, exec-shield, LVM, ext3, and many many other features. New technology will continue to be included in the base operating system releases used by the community, as that is the best way to reach the largest number of people to test the software and report bugs so they can be fixed. Wether it is "Red Hat Linux" or "Fedora Core" doesn't really matter much, as all that has changed in this sense is the name (as far as new features (some possibly experimental) go). >It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc." Correct, it's not supported in the sense you can pick up the telephone and call Red Hat, and pay for a telephone/web/etc. support contract for the OS. It is supported in the sense that users can report bugs in bugzilla, and they will be investigated to be fixed in future OS releases, or in erratum releases as deemed appropriate. So there are definitely some changes in the way the OS is developed, and supported, but they are not massive changes in the way things are done, nor are they changes that are going to throw quality out the window and leave users with a permanent beta-test OS. Far from it. In my personal opinion, I fully expect to see our Fedora Core releases be as high if not higher quality as Red Hat Linux was. It has the same Red Hat people working on it as it always has afterall, only now we're working more closely with the community to improve the OS all that much more. And with the community participating in the future, both with suggestions for improvement, as well as making some of those improvements and contributing them, and once the infrastructure is in place to allow externally maintained packages, I believe that a high quality OS will not only continue to be produced, but it will be higher quality as the more skilled people get involved with the project. I also look forward to seeing things like Fedora/AMD64 and Fedora/Alpha ports be available, and both several Red Hat employees, as well as many in the community would like to see this occur too. While nothing official has happened yet WRT such, there are definitely enough people interested that it's only a matter of time until everything is in place to make it a reality. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat
